A distinctly miserable Council Executive Committee meeting yesterday. There were a large number of very positive items on what was a very full agenda, but they were far outweighed by three reports on cuts to adult social care.

Since the Council budget was set in March detailed consultation and equality impact assessments had to be carried out in a number of areas before final decisions could be taken. Yesterday's three reports on Voluntary Sector Grants, Supporting People and Fairer Charging, bring us almost to the end of that process. Early Years, which comes back to the Executive in the new year, following the consultation that is currently underway, will be the last, and hopefully that will then see us through to the end of 2012/3, but we have no idea what government will have in store for us after that. The financial settlement imposed by government means that cuts on this scale are unavoidable. There is a broad consensus that whoever won the election would have had to tackle the deficit and that would have meant cuts in public expenditure. My view is that these cuts are too fast and too deep, the speed making both the decision making and the implementation very much more difficult, the depth making the impact on individuals and families worse than it needs to be and also impinging on our capacity to grow the economy. Unfortunately the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a different view and it's him making the decisions. What there can't be any argument about is the unfairness of the cuts and Supporting People is a very good example of this. The programme nationally has been cut by around 1%, but Manchester's allocation has been cut by a whopping 35%, £12.6m. That means in practice that an enormous amount of money is being taken from people and families in need in Manchester (and many other equally deprived areas around the country) and being redistributed to more affluent areas. How can that be fair?